-1. I am in favor of the bylaws as a living document, and consensus makes it much more difficult to improve upon things if there is a large, but not universal, support.
On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 10:40 AM, Sean Busbey <bus...@cloudera.com> wrote: > On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 12:19 PM, John Vines <vi...@apache.org> wrote: > > > So, I pseudo got an explanation for the second point in the CtR > discussion, > > so I'm going to withdraw that comment. However, I would still appreciate > an > > explanation for initial paragraph. > > > > > > On Fri, Apr 4, 2014 at 12:32 PM, John Vines <vi...@apache.org> wrote: > > > > > The majority of the reasoning I read in the bylaws thread justifying > why > > > bylaw changes should be majority and not consensus seemed to spiral > > around > > > "We don't want someone to be able to torpedo the vote". Can someone who > > > held this opinion clarify why this is unacceptable for a bylaw change > but > > > acceptable for adopting a new code base, a new committer, a new pmc > > member, > > > or a new pmc chair? Primarily I was looking at these compared to bylaw > > > changes when I made decided that bylaws should have the same level of > > > approval. I feel that having these items as consensus by bylaws as > > majority > > > seems inconsistent. > > > > > > > N.b. I don't subscribe to the "we don't want someone to torpedo the vote" > concern. (btw I would rephrase it as "we don't want casual or obstinate > participants to deadlock the community.") > > One big difference between our bylaws and e.g. new committer, new pmc > member, etc. is that after the vote passes we effectively give up control > over that decision. As mentioned during the early work on the bylaws, only > the ASF can remove people. > > For comparison, if there's a problem with the bylaws we can amend them > ourselves with an additional vote. > > I happen to think that Majority Approval leads to better consensus building > in well functioning communities. As Benson mentioned in his earlier email, > it's important for the majority opinion to avoid running roughshod over the > minority opinion. I think well functioning communities take this to heart > and work to moderate their positions. By comparison, the nature of vetoes > in Consensus Approval can lead people to squabbling over the legitimacy of > a particular veto on technical grounds. > > At the end of the day, wether the vote is Majority or Consensus won't > matter. Either of them can be abused should a segment of the community > decide to and we'll be faced with very negative outcomes regardless. More > important, to me, is that we not get too distracted in the process of > deciding which to use. > > -- > Sean >
